book

Women in the Medieval English Countryside: Gender and Household in Brigstock before the Plague

(Unlike most histories of European women, which have typic...)

Unlike most histories of European women, which have typically focused on the 19th and 20th century elite, this study reconstructs the public lives of peasant women and men during the six decades before the Black Death of 1348-49. Drawing on the extensive records of the forest manor of Brigstock, Judith Bennett challenges the myth of a "golden age" of equality for medieval men and women. Instead, she ably shows that women faced profound political, legal, economic, and social disadvantages in their dealings with men. These disadvantages stemmed more from women's household status as dependents of their husbands than from any notion of female inferiority; consequently, adolescents and widows participated much more actively than wives in the public life of Brigstock. Women in the Medieval English Countryside demonstrates not only how enduring the subordination of women has been throughout English history, but also how firmly that subordination has been rooted in the conjugal household.

A Medieval Life: Cecilia Penifader of Brigstock, c. 1295-1344

(This history of medieval village life is told through the...)

This history of medieval village life is told through the experiences of Cecilia Penifader, a peasant woman who lived on one English manor in the early fourteenth century. This truly unique book offers a wealth of insight into medieval peasant society, bringing many of the characteristics of a time and a people to life. Short and readable, it is an ideal text for undergraduate teaching, suitable for courses in Western civilization, medieval history, women's history, and English history.

History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism

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Written for everyone interested in women's and gender h...)

Written for everyone interested in women's and gender history, History Matters reaffirms the importance to feminist theory and activism of long-term historical perspectives. Judith M. Bennett, who has been commenting on developments in women's and gender history since the 1980s, argues that the achievement of a more feminist future relies on a rich, plausible, and well-informed knowledge of the past, and she asks her readers to consider what sorts of feminist history can best advance the struggles of the twenty-first century.
Bennett takes as her central problem the growing chasm between feminism and history. Closely allied in the 1970s, each has now moved away from the other. Seeking to narrow this gap, Bennett proposes that feminist historians turn their attention to the intellectual challenges posed by the persistence of patriarchy. She posits a "patriarchal equilibrium" whereby, despite many changes in women's experiences over past centuries, women's status vis-à-vis that of men has remained remarkably unchanged. Although, for example, women today find employment in occupations unimaginable to medieval women, medieval and modern women have both encountered the same wage gap, earning on average only three-fourths of the wages earned by men. Bennett argues that the theoretical challenge posed by this patriarchal equilibrium will be best met by long-term historical perspectives that reach back well before the modern era. In chapters focused on women's work and lesbian sexuality, Bennett demonstrates the contemporary relevance of the distant past to feminist theory and politics. She concludes with a chapter that adds a new twist—the challenges of textbooks and classrooms—to viewing women's history from a distance and with feminist intent.
A new manifesto, History Matters engages forthrightly with the challenges faced by feminist historians today. It argues for the radical potential of a history that is focused on feminist issues, aware of the distant past, attentive to continuities over time, and alert to the workings of patriarchal power.

Medieval Europe: A Short History

(Medieval Europe introduces today's students to the mediev...)

Medieval Europe introduces today's students to the medieval roots of our own society. In an accessible and engaging narrative, it tells how the peoples of medieval Europe built, understood, and changed their world. Never losing sight of the neighboring civilizations of Byzantium and Islam, it has its feet firmly planted in the medieval West, from whence it gives ample consideration to such subjects as women's lives, Jewish communities, ordinary people, and the experiences of Europeans in the often-neglected centuries of the Later Middle Ages.

Medieval Europe: A Short History, 10th Edition

(Marked by C. Warren Hollister's clear historical vision a...)

Marked by C. Warren Hollister's clear historical vision and engaging teaching style, this classic text has been judiciously revised by Judith Bennett; the tenth edition includes greater coverage of Byzantium and Islam, a revised map program, a new essay program on medieval myths, and more. In his preface to the eighth edition, Professor Hollister wrote of his realization, while in college, that our world today "is a product of the medieval past." Medieval Europe introduces today's students to the medieval roots of our own society.

Other Work

Author: (book) Women in the Medieval English Countryside: Gender and Household in Brigstock before the Plague, 1987, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women's Work in a Changing World, 1300 to 1600, 1996 (Otto Grundler Prize), A Medieval Life: Cecilia Penifader of Brigstock, 1998, Medieval Women in Modern Perspective, 2000, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism, 2006, Medieval Europe: A Short History, 2005. Editor: Sisters and Workers in The Middle Ages, 1989, Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800, 1999.

Membership

Fellow: Royal History Society, Medieval Academy American. Member: American History Association, North American Conference British Studies, Berkshire Conference Women Historians (trustee 1995-1998), Coordinating Council for Women in History (co-president 1994-1997).